Starting field position is a significant factor for offensive success. The closer a drive starts to the end zone, the more likely it is that the offense will score. On average, college football teams start 14.3 percent of offensive possessions in plus territory (at midfield or on the opponent’s side of the 50-yard line). Short field opportunities are most often created by exceptional defensive and special teams play.

Ten teams appeared in the top twenty on both of Brian’s lists. Would it surprise you to learn that the only team of those ten to finish with a losing record was Georgia?

16 responses to “Athens, Georgia, where statistics go to die.”

Anyone not convinced yet that last season for UGA was mystifying? We had chances, we didn’t capitalize, we lost close games that we should have won. That is why the record doesn’t match the stats. We were a 6-7 team in recorded wins and losses only.

Enough already. Let’s look forward and stop beating everyone up for the past. It is officially August, 2011 football is the topic to dwell on.

The Senator has been nibbling at the mystery you referred to and has been using stat guys to chip the stone casts of discord emanating from that mystery.

It is more than interesting to me that stats haven’t given a smoother view. Could it be that our viewscreens have been skewed by the coach bashing whereas the problem’s answer could lie heavily on individual player vagaries? Player attitudes at critical moments? Part of this may rest in the milieu of recruiting puffery where negative anti-UGA remarks by other schools come to rest in the backswamps of players’s minds even though they commit to us(i.e., “the jury will disregard”, “UGA just uses their athletes, they don’t do anything for them”, “you’re going to end up pumping gas or a menial job”)? Then when things don’t go the way they dreamed, these remarks surface as deja vu and translate into attitude problems unseen and unidentified by the coaches.

The Senator’s hunt has merits for us all if we can get some satisfactory answer in order to proceed without feeling like walking thru peanut butter after our first loss. Otherwise, I just may be full of crap!

OT loss to UF where we had so many possibilities, didn’t show up, at all, for the bowl game, and did a Bama-like collapse against the AubieCanes. No way 2010 was a very good team, but it was closer to being a 9-4 or 8-5 team than a 6-7.

While embarrassing, it isn’t like we are crawling out of a deep hole. Fans need to get behind the new team and push/lift them. Not you, but there is too much negativity amongst the fanbase. Let’s try a different approach for a change. I concede nothing to any of our opponents, they all look beatable.

When it came time to win the close games in the 4th quarter and overtime, we were not well-conditioned in body and mind to do it. Our endurance was poor.

No two-a-days, very little contact in early practices, rotating starting lineups with player suspensions, a largely absent S&C coordinator, an S&C program focused more on agility and less on endurance, and temporary S&C facilities all contributed to this problem.

The Georgia Tech game was the only exception to our late-game problems. You will remember we gave them plenty of opportunities to win it in the 4th quarter, but were able to escape it because the Jackets were playing without their starting quarterback and their kicker missed a chip shot.

In contrast, most of Coach Dooley’s teams’ overall record out-paced their statistical results. Our new AD and our current S&C coordinators have been around these teams. They know the difference and have been addressing this problem since January 4.

I am confident we will see a different set of late-game results this season.

It would be good to review all these remarks for that frustration level that infects us all. I think that most of these posts reflect that and have supportive elements to my first post Good id of the mystery components can be found to Macallanlover’s post @ 8:39 AM.

Looks like the offense was handed good field position plenty of times. Whether it’s a good year or poor one comes down to how much the O maximizes on those opportunities. This year’s easier schedule should allow the O plenty of chances to score. The defenses we’re going up against just aren’t that good. I still say we get 10 wins. But I don’t expect any significant changes to the vanilla offense. I expect them to block better. The improved D gets us 4 more wins than last year.

Bloviation for the Dawgnation

Quote Of The Day

“It brings back a great Bulldog running back in Thomas who has NFL playing experience and has had success as a college coach at multiple schools. He also inherits a position that has been built to an elite level by Bryan. And it gives Bryan the opportunity to return to coaching the position he played and the one where he cut his teeth serving as a graduate assistant under wide receiver coach John Eason here at UGA. It also provides him with a new experience as a passing game coordinator.” -- Mark Richt, AB-H, 2/16/15